


A Simple Moment

by Chewie13



Series: I Don't Even Know What This Is/Will Be [1]
Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ersa just survives due to reasons, Heart-to-Heart, Read at Your Own Risk, Same universe, This is just an experiment/something to keep me writing, i think
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:08:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26466166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chewie13/pseuds/Chewie13
Summary: Ersa survives and Aloy and her have a moment of camaraderie.
Relationships: Aloy & Ersa (Horizon: Zero Dawn)
Series: I Don't Even Know What This Is/Will Be [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1923994
Comments: 8
Kudos: 18





	A Simple Moment

**Author's Note:**

> A heads up, in this fic Ersa survives thanks to Aloy and this is a moment between them after Aloy has helped her begin to recover from her ordeal with Dervahl. I know it's out of context but I literally don't have the energy to write the first, like, 10 chapters between then and this moment and this kind of just hit me this morning so here it is. 
> 
> I hope you like it despite that though!

The water was cold. A prickle or gooseflesh that rose with the rush of river water on her spine. Her body responding in kind to the sudden change from furs to undergarments but the tension in her body refused to cease. Catching each breath as it stuttered out told her that her breathing was uneven but the mist upon each exhale was satisfying to watch nonetheless.

It distracted her. Allowed her to escape into the few moments between each tense inhale and exhale because her body ached.

A throb that ran deep and long, so much so that her head to her feet felt heavy with its weight. It made relaxing a task, a chore, rather than an easy peace she longed for.

Her palms resisted the want to shake as she ran her hands along the expanse of her arms. A futile attempt to rub the hilly surface of her chill away, but a hiss was all she could muster instead. The mottled patchwork of discolored skin than ran across her body, a stampede of bruising that sat in muted but no less tender tones.

Her time under Dervahl’s care saw to it that even the most menial of tasks would hurt, if only for a while. Bruising did heal, no matter their depth, but it was the reminder of her helplessness that had her teeth gritted.

She didn’t hold it for long, her current situation demanding ease more so than her hate, so she attempted to relax once more.

Besides, she chided herself with an experimental roll of her shoulders, she was alive. Alive enough to watch the veritable sunset she was traveling with putter around their camp.

A small ways from the water’s edge, alight with a brightness that matched the Nora’s hair. The warrior placing food upon the fire, fish from the looks of it. The sticks gaunt but standing freely next to the warmth and the thought of it, of food and heat, had her arms prickling with the hilly bumps again. As if to hurry her out of the cleansing bath she so desperately needed.

She sighed, hands coming to rub at the bumps and their stubbornness to stay on her skin. It was the huntress's attempt at privacy, Ersa knew. To stay at a distance while Ersa sat, vulnerable and tired in the mid-morning waters. Her appreciation for it was shown in the silent nod she offered Aloy as the borrowed furs slide off her body.

Her help needed given that raising her arms pulled at her waist a hair too much. The stretch good for her but hated in the way it extended at her muscles and so she stood still as Aloy helped unfasten the simple garments.

And now here she sat. A sore body made heavier by her ordeal, and she could barely lift a hand to relieve it.

She must have sat too long, still and quiet, because the crunch of rocks under feet had her eye sliding to the bank. The Nora huntress had her hip cocked, a hand resting on one side, but there was little else to indicate what she was thinking. Her face a blank mask, but her gaze reached far beyond the space where their eyes met.

Ersa swallowed. A small, forgotten part of her expecting judgment. Expecting the punishment that usually followed a show of vulnerability, of weakness. A ghost from her past that gnawed at her insides, but Aloy merely tilted her head, assessing. A small vial resting in her palm.

“Would you like some help?” The question unsure in its tone but the look on the huntress’ face was already hard. A determined edge that Ersa hadn’t quite seen yet.

It didn’t cow her though. Not at all.

This determination didn’t read as overbearing. As a promise of harm or mocking veneer that she remembered. Of the kind that saw fit to stand on her bruised body, a worthless fit of triumph.

No, this one was familiar. Was filled with a balanced amount of kind assuredness that plastered the Nora’s face with a strong smile. The kind that had Ersa nodding, hesitant at first but sure by her second, and the smile on Aloy’s face soon bore teeth.

Her clothes were left at the water’s edge, much like Ersa’s. An unceremonious pile of cloth and fur and the water parted as Aloy strode it. The disruption creating small ripples between the pair as Aloy reached her. She sat slowly, gentle not to jar the otherwise calm stream any more than she already had.

Her choice in seating herself behind Ersa was suspect, although the Oseram wasn’t sure what to expect. She did accept Aloy’s help, but then again, she didn’t stop to consider what that help might be.

Her curiosity soon answered when bare palms, cautious in their presence on her shoulders, smoothed away at the grime that covered them. The shock was less in the act and more in the fact that Aloy, despite her softness she appeared to have, had callused hands. Rough from obvious use but not to a point that they hurt and Ersa couldn’t help the small smile that found its way to her reflection.

She heard something rise out of the water after a while. A cool stream of water soon cascaded through her hair and she opened her eye against it. She hadn’t realized she closed it and that struck her as odd but even odder still was the fact that her body had relaxed enough for her to close them in the first place. The calm sweep of hands upon her had bled the tension out and she wasn’t sure how to take it so she didn’t.

A second cascade found her hair and Ersa attempted to turn, intent on asking what the huntress was doing, when the smell of bittersweet and crisp hit her. Those same callused hands carded through what was left of the hair on her head alongside a bold scent that had her aborting her question just to breathe deep. The water cupped again, the sound now recognizable, and then the burst of smell, and she leaned into the touch upon her crown.

She was cleaning her hair, she thought absently. The dull throb along her body bowing to the bitterness of berry and faint whiffs of Hintergold petal. A calming smell in its essence and Aloy was carding it through her hair of all things.

It wasn’t until those deft hands moved that Ersa came back to herself. Her daze broken when Aloy cupped the ball of her shoulder and stayed there.

“Do you want this off?” And oh.

She looked down at the binding around her chest, held tight by fastens and still firmly in place. The grit that itched its way through her clothes had mostly subsided. Sand washed away but the dirt still clung to her and Ersa wanted to be clean. To feel clean at least. But she knew she couldn’t unbind it herself. The tightness in her torso saw to that, so she nodded.

It was small, missable, but Ersa was finding that Aloy rarely missed much, and the band slowly unraveled as a result. Careful was how Ersa’d describe the moves the Nora made. Careful but deliberate and soon her breasts fell free from the wrap. The spring water just as chilly as before, but already she felt cleaner for it.

The hands were soon replaced with a cloth and each pass was made with the same careful, deliberate strokes that unbound her breast wrap. They flowed down her arms, up her back, across whatever they could find. Each pass gentle upon the bruising, the hands that lifted her own, that moved her body this was and that, did so with a single-minded focus that Ersa was thankful for.

Eventually the Oseram found herself face to face with the woman who helped her. Who saved her once and showed a kindness and honesty Ersa could barely expect from her guard. The cloth came up, reaching towards her face and the gnarly mark that etched its way across it, and Ersa knew she trusted this woman. At the very least, she trusted her with her body and that said she trusted Aloy with far more than she trusted many others with. The scars that marred it, the mottled mismatch of blue-black skin, all the vulnerable pieces her body told the story of, and she knew she could trust Aloy with it all.

Her eye closed at the realization. A steady breath finding its way out of her as the cloth wiped away the last vestiges of her time in captivity.

Freeing, was what Ersa would call it.

The slosh of water met her ears and she opened her eyes to find green pools staring back.

“You should rest a bit longer in the water. The cold will do well for the stiffness in your muscles,” and then she rose. A sleek figure full of muscle of her own as she headed for the bank and Ersa watched after her.

There was no judgement, only acceptance, and that had her speaking.

“Thank you, Aloy,” she said. Her voice steady in a way her body refused to be as of late. The Nora stopped, rivulets dripping from every inch of her as she turned to give Ersa the cheekiest grin the woman had ever seen.

She found herself returning one of her own in kind.

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: This is part of a personal experiment/goal of mine. I love these two characters as friends but am abysmal at creating a writing schedule and/or feeling confident in my abilities to write so the ideas go nowhere. I even have an outline for an entire story but I literally have 0 confidence to write it. This snippet is a part of that story but I refuse to keep letting my ideas get lost in my never-to-be-seen-again notes so from now on I'll be dumping my ideas here as I come up with them and you all can enjoy it at your own risk. :D The warning is there as my way of saying that this may go unfinished/be inconsistent/or exist as a literal jumble of words that make no sense so yeah. 
> 
> Feel free to leave comments or requests as you all see fit. I may or may not fulfill them.


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